Frequently Asked Questions asked by those thinking about using Guide
Usually, the questions asked by people using Guide are quite different from those asked by people considering the purchase of Guide. So the FAQ list has been split accordingly. Click here for the FAQ for current Guide users.
Guide is a full-featured star charting and desktop planetarium program. It generates charts ranging in size from a full hemisphere (180 degrees) down to one arcsecond, showing an extensive variety of celestial objects. Most people use it for making finder charts for use at the telescope, so it provides a lot of features for selecting how a chart should be drawn. For example, observers of variable stars might want all variables and suspected variables shown, but no galaxies and nebulae and asteroids only down to magnitude 13. With Guide, customizing and printing such charts is very easy to do.
The second most common use of the software is to get very detailed information about objects. Guide quite often will be able to extract data for an object from several catalogs (click here for a list of these catalogs), cross-referencing between them to tell you everything you might want to know about an object. (Click here for examples of the data Guide gives you for different types of objects.)
In addition to the built-in, and very extensive, set of catalogs, Guide allows users to add their own datasets. Usually, you won't need to do that, because someone else will have done it before you and will have provided the files needed to display that catalog. Click here for a list of some of these additional datasets that Guide can show. It's possible to add almost any "plain text" (ASCII) dataset with modest effort.
Guide shows almost everything in the solar system: artificial satellites, all planets and almost all of their satellites, Sun, Moon, comets, and asteroids. Zoom in on planets and satellites, and features appear, including a highly detailed rendition of the Moon. Lists of planetary events and charts showing the paths of eclipses, occultations, and transits are easy to generate.
Guide comes with two built-in databases for star charting: the Tycho-2 dataset, giving detailed information for the brightest 2.5 million stars, and the GSC-ACT, which provides positions and magnitudes for about 15 million stars (down to about magnitude 14.5). Those needing still more detail can zoom in on a given area, and tell Guide to extract data from the USNO-A2.0 or B1.0 catalogues, either from CD-ROMs supplied by USNO or via Internet. Several other "megacatalogues" (UCAC-2, SDSS, GSC-2.4) are also available via Internet.
Guide comes with images of almost all deep-sky objects, which pop up in the background when you zoom in on a given DSO; click here to see examples of what this looks like. The images were extracted from the Digital Sky Survey (DSS), and are of excellent quality. The DSO database contains information about over 190,000 galaxies and almost all catalogued open clusters, planetary and diffuse nebulae, globular and open clusters, and so on.
Should this not seem enough, you can zoom in on an area of interest and request a Digital Sky Survey image via Internet. Guide will pass the request on to a server at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and after a minute or so (depending on the image size), the DSS image will pop up in the background.
More advanced users find the CHARON astrometry software to be extremely helpful in automatically extracting positions of asteroids and comets.
Is there a demo version of Guide?
No.
The major reason for this is that it would be extremely painful to try to "condense" Guide into a reasonably-sized download. The main benefit of Guide is that it has a huge array of features and displays an immense amount of data from many sources; these would have to be cut back sharply to make it small enough to download. Perhaps, if cable modems and similar high-speed connections become common, that situation will change. But at present, it's not possible.
The lack of a demo admittedly makes it harder for prospective users to evaluate the software. To evade this handicap, an effort is made to make these Web pages as descriptive as possible. Screen shots are available on the site. Sample printouts are available, by postal mail, on request. Furthermore, a 30-day unconditional guarantee is provided. Many people have used this as a sort of "trial period". Returns are sufficiently rare that this method apparently works quite well.
Guide is quite gentle on system requirements. Windows 95 or 98 or ME or NT or 2000 or XP or Vista is required. Some people tend to put old hardware in their observatories; this is not a problem for Guide.
Hard disk space: Guide is distributed on two CD-ROMs. You can install part or all of both CDs to your hard drive; there is a very straightforward utility inside Guide to configure this. If you copy absolutely everything, it will consume about 1.3 GBytes of hard drive space. At the other extreme, you can do a "minimal install" of about 15 MBytes, though Guide will then provide only the most basic functions if a CD isn't in the drive. (If a Guide CD is in the drive, Guide will recognize that fact and make use of it.)
At intermediate levels, you can select datasets of interest to be copied over to the hard drive, choosing the functions of greatest interest to you.
Some people with older laptops lacking CD-ROM drives have evaded the problem by temporarily installing Guide on another PC that does have a CD drive. Once everything is set up on that machine, with the items you want installed to the hard drive, the whole works can be copied over to the laptop, via network, or parallel port, or USB stick, or null-modem cable.
Guide can be switched from the "usual" view, showing an uninverted chart, to show charts that are inverted north/south, east/west, or flipped 180 degrees (as in a refractor without a star diagonal). In addition, one can switch between the default mode with north at the top (the way most star charts are drawn) to a mode where the zenith is at the top (the way the sky actually will look with an alt/az mount, or naked eye, or binoculars). In this latter mode, the horizon runs straight across the screen, from left to right.
One can also combine these modes. For example, a refractor user with an alt/az mount would choose the "zenith up" mode, combined with a flipped chart. This would produce charts with the exact orientation seen at the eyepiece.
It should be noted that almost all decent astronomy software has such features. Guide can claim many advantages and unique features, but this is not actually one of them.
The short version is that Guide is as accurate, or more accurate, than any other star charting software. Almost all professional software makes use of raw data from the same US Government sources (the National Space Science Data Center and the Astronomical Data Center) for objects such as stars, nebulae, clusters, galaxies, and so on. And almost all professionally written software computes solar system data using the VSOP theories for the planets, ELP theory for the Moon, and Lieske's E2x3 theory for the satellites of Jupiter.
Guide does have the (unusual) ability to compute planetary positions to about .01 arcsecond, using the "full" VSOP and PS1996 theories. It can also compute them using the JPL DE ephemerides, which are essentially the best positions available (VSOP and PS1996 are derived from DE ephemerides). This goes far beyond most reasonable needs, but does allow Guide to boast the best currently-possible accuracy for solar system objects.
Guide also makes use of several recent advances in catalogs, such as the Tycho-2 and Hipparcos star catalogs. These datasets provide much more precise position, magnitude, proper motion, and parallax (distance) data, for more stars, than was previously possible. Also, the latest version of the PGC (Principal Galaxy Catalog), with over 190,000 galaxies, is used.
You can click here for full details on the accuracy of various parts of Guide.
What does the screen look like?
There is a set of screen shots on this page.
This screen shot demonstrates several characteristics of Guide. The objects are positioned to within about an arcsecond, considerably less than the apparent size of Mars. The features are precisely rendered on Mars (allowing for the fact that Mars does change slowly over time); in the case of Jupiter, we are observing clouds, and we don't really know what the weather was like on Jupiter in 1170, or even if the Great Red Spot existed back then! But the major belts, at least, were probably the same then as they are now.
This capability is really quite general; you can make similar charts showing visibility areas for transits, or asteroid occultations of stars, and so on. Click here for some more examples of this capability. A while ago, in response to a question about lunar occultations of visible planets, some further screen shots were posted here.
The "user-added datasets" have expanded over the years, as people sent in the files they used for the feature. Click here for a list of some of the datasets Guide can show.
At some point, sample printouts will be uploaded to this page (probably in both .gif and .pdf form). In the meantime, the printouts can be snail-mailed to you if you provide your address.
Can you get black stars on a white background, and/or white stars on a black background?
Yes to both. Printouts always have a white background; but on the screen, you can select one of several "background modes". The default is "normal mode" (white stars on a black background.) Alternatively, you can have "chart mode" (black stars on a white background); "red mode" (red stars on a black background... in fact, everything on screen becomes red or black, to aid night adaptation); "flashlight mode" (black stars on a red background... this can cast enough red light to help you find dropped eyepieces and such); or "realistic mode" (the background is black at night, blue in the day, with various shades of blue and purple during twilight.)
Guide comes with a printed, spiral-bound manual. It's hoped that the software will be intuitive enough that you won't need to use the manual (and it does seem people only use a manual if they are in serious trouble.) But Guide is a huge, complex, powerful program. Eventually, you'll want to make use of that power to do something such as add new comets or asteroids, or to hook in your own datasets to be shown using your own custom symbols. When that happens, the manual will be an excellent reference.
What's the guarantee/return policy?
Guide comes with a 30-day return policy. Just ship the CD-ROM back with a note requesting a refund. (You need not give any reasons for the return, but it would be appreciated if you did.)
What's the policy on upgrades?
Each time a new version has neared completion, upgrade offers have been sent to current Guide users (and have been announced on this site). The last three upgrades were priced at $30, with shipping included; this will probably happen with Guide 9 as well.
Do I have to download the updated software from the Web site?
To get the features described on this page, no; everything that has been mentioned is on the CD-ROM. But the software is in an almost constant state of improvement. The best move is probably to run the software for a while, and then to look at the list of improvements on the update page. You may see items there that would justify downloading the large files required to update your software.
There is (as yet) no on-line, secure ordering system. You can click here for a copy of the order form, fill it out, and mail (or e-mail, or fax) it in.
Guide sells for $89 (no shipping charges in the US and Canada; $3 air mail shipping to the rest of the world). MasterCard, VISA, money order, and checks drawn on US funds are accepted. Usually, a copy is shipped within a day or two of receiving an order. If you include an e-mail address in the order, then you'll get a short note confirming that your order has been shipped.
If you are ordering from Germany (or would like to receive the German-language version of Guide), you should contact the dealers for Guide in Germany.
Orders can be sent by e-mail ; or sent to:
Project Pluto 168 Ridge Road Bowdoinham ME 04008 (UNITED STATES) tel (207) 666 5750 tel (800) 777 5886 (1-800-PR-PLUTO) fax (207) 666 3149What resellers exist for Guide?
In the United States, there is one reseller for Guide: you can order it through Sky & Telescope. Internationally, there are several dealers:
and:
FRANZ FOTO OTTICA srl Via XX Settembre, 16 09125 Cagliari (ITALY)and:
Science Shop Unit 316 Southgate Center 111th St., 51st Ave Edmonton AB T6H 4M6 (CANADA)Can I use Guide charts and data in my Web site and/or printed publications?
Yes. There are no restrictions on the use of Guide charts. (Most people do include links back to this Web site, or mention that Guide was used to make the charts.) Basically, your use of such charts is regarded as a sort of "free advertising" for Guide. If anything, such use is encouraged.
If you post Guide charts on your Web site, please e-mail the URL to me. At some point, I would like to create a list of links to such charts, to provide examples of how people actually use Guide.
